Esoterica

The seed falls upon the path, the rocks, the thorns, and the good ground.SG Eastern Star. Various organizations have attempted to prepare good ground for planting in Spring Grove.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, writer of the Norwegian National Anthem’s lyrics, visited Spring Grove to lecture on the prophets and their figurative speech

Why should we hide our SG treasures? Why not make them available for everyone, everywhere?

Spring Grove has unique treasures. They must be guarded carefully by people with ties to the past and, even more importantly, ties to the future of the Spring Grove community. Anyone could become part of the stewardship vanguard, but, as has been illustrated by parable, there are many types of soil.

Few are willing to take time regularly to study, reflect, and act in a way that promotes the long-term good of their community and the preservation of its treasures, some of which are, like fossil fuels, unrenewable if squandered. The prosperity and survival of all communities lies in the decisions they make, both big and small. Without a mature stewardship vanguard, a community will eventually fall victim to the siren songs of mere rhetoric. Most communities in history have gone extinct. They have fallen victim to their own inability to tell the difference between what is right from that which seems right.

There is a way that seems right to people, but its end is the way of extinction. Proverbs 14:12

Some rare communities have endured for thousands of years. These few communities have passed down a tradition of skepticism about the vacillating opinions of the masses. They have succeeded in nurturing critical thinking about the inherent weakness of the human psyche in groups. Humans tend to believe just about anything, no matter how absurd, if it has “social proof.” In other words, we tend to believe something simply because it is “what everyone else thinks.” This has been so for thousands of years. It has also been equally true that a stewardship vanguard cannot base its decisions entirely on the opinions of others and still serve their community. For

The fear of man bringeth a snare… Proverbs 29:2

The nature and extent of the above proverbial snare has been known from days of old, but only to a few in each generation who could read between the lines to identify it. It has been forbidden to directly write down the nature of the snare so that anyone can understand it, but it is not forbidden to give indirect hints, so long as they are fairly disseminated. You may become one of those few who understand that certain texts contain information more than meets the eye. You might learn to read between the lines of texts you are already familiar with, seeing them in an altogether new light.

The first step in your initiation is to recognize the importance of distinguishing words of knowledge from empty public rhetoric.

Leave the presence of a fool, Or you will not discern words of knowledge. Proverbs 14:7

In contrast with public rhetoric is private dialectic, or the free association of people who are interested in focusing on a topic–such as stewardship–and working with others who wish to seriously think about it rather than to simply posture themselves as serving a perceived rewarding institution. Thus, we have this section dedicated to esoteric interpretations of history, and it is reserved for members only, who earn progressively higher level passwords through various winnowing initiations that will test their physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual fortitude. These winnowing initiations are empowering if you stick with them and humor is always the best way to convey the deepest messages. However, there are also other essays and exercises that can advance understanding of stewardship models of our community’s ancestors and their methods of sharing them, usually with a wink and a smile.

Why esoterica for community stewardship?

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population–the intelligent ones or the fools? Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen 1828-1906

Esoteric traditions have been around for thousands of years. These have been passed down by parents, priests, prophets, philosophers (Socrates), even Jesus, to an inner circle in confidence. This inner circle was then able to steer the majority in the right or (in the case of enemies) wrong direction with rhetoric and other psychological tricks. Although there are certainly esoteric societies with handshakes and all the other bells and whistles, the practices don’t have to actually be all that tightly regulated to convey esoteric insight. As a simple example, our Spring Grove ancestors may have conferred practical wisdom to their fellow Norwegians-Americans who possessed the linguistic key to understanding the double meaning of a statement that Ola makes about Lars in Ola and Per comics. Keys to understanding the encrypted esoteric meaning of exoteric speech could be be found in many things: poems, riddles/koans, songs, jokes, books, or daily activities.

Professors & Pastors at Synod in Spring Grove in 1899

Communities have used esoteric teachings to fight dysfunctionality within their own community due to popular prejudice, authoritarian individuals, coercion from outside groups, and subversion by foreign powers. Sometimes, the teachings were not encrypted sufficiently, as was the case for Aesop, whose fables about “animals” got him thrown off a cliff by the local tyrant of his day. Sometimes the teachings have a double encryption, where breaking the apparent encryption leads one on a “wild goose chase.” During WWII, Spring Grove’s Norwegian cousins in occupied Norway used encrypted irony to appear to yield to their cruel authoritarian occupiers while waking up their fellow countrymen to join in the underground fight for Norway’s inalienable right to self-determination. After WWII, members of an inner circle of Norwegians set up everything so that their statement, “Never again!” would not merely be rhetoric. No government could ever occupy Norway without suffering more than they could possibly gain by the occupation. Norway’s guerrilla warfare plans could not be both public and remain effective. They must not be shared with those who do not need to know. If they are shared, they would almost certainly be fake.

In addition to providing a means of resisting tyrants, esoteric dialectic also helps to inoculate at least a subset of society, against the rhetorical pied pipers of nihilism that could otherwise fool most of the people, most of the time. Though these teachings confer understanding of universal principles, because the stories may be particular to the families or communities involved, they may not be interesting to everyone. Some may be the private concerns of our village, or of Midwest villages in a similar situation, and may not belong in the realm of international speech.

It is impossible for an isolated individual or family to resist the coercion of today’s adept psychological operators, who use polls, advertising, agent provocateurs, false dichotomies, and various types of black propaganda to cajole, coerce, or crush all divergent views. America’s founding fathers believed that an informed populace of reading citizens was the best safeguard against tyranny. They likely would be concerned about the mass-manufacturing of “desirable” public opinion for the highest bidding corporation, nation, or other entity. Just as an individual has a fourth amendment right to be secure in his or her papers and possessions, so too, a community has the right to selectively share the deeper thoughts and writings of their ancestors and their town’s concerned citizens.

It is only by exercising their constitutional right to freely associate (protected by the US First Amendment and International Declaration of Human Rights) that communities can promote sustainability and set agendas for collective bargaining that would safeguard the community against foreign interests. I will just use an example to illustrate my point. In farming communities, some farmers have reported corporate bullying by seed manufacturers, who, in their greed for more and more wealth and power, try to promote complete dependency among farmers on their seeds. Seed companies have now genetically engineered seeds that will produce plants without reproductively viable seeds by inserting something called the Terminator gene. If the Terminator gene or a similar genetic sequence spreads through widespread airborne pollination to non-Terminator bearing plants in neighbors’ fields, an age old self-reliance that has given farmers a unique ability to stand against tyranny could be destroyed.

When corporations develop and implement technology that would allow them to control the production of the vast majority of the world’s food, they are assuming unprecedented and certainly corrupting power. Such corporations have the financial means to intimidate family farmers who stand in the way of their version of progress. They can always find cooperative local reactionary Quisling puppets to front for their professional operators who will coerce, cajole, sue, or crush any grass-roots effort to protect the self-evident right of the farmer to grow his own seed on his own land. While they devise plans to implement biological warfare against heirloom seed stock, they send their lawyers to claim they are the victims of small farmers in courts. Only communities that develop operational security within their deliberations would be able to bring their legal cases to court prior to watching their community systematically subverted through well orchestrated psychological operations using all legal means to their end–from spreading disinformation to the public demonizing of grass-roots leaders. The policies psychological operators follow were all written down in Sun Tzu’s Art of War on the chapter on subversion about 500 BC, but modern psychology and technological advances have made subversion a science where it once was an art. That is just an example which we will probably never get around to even discussing, but it does illustrate how the rights that our founding fathers insisted were essential if self-determination were to have any meaning–freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the right to privacy, are all interrelated. Destroy one and you have effectively destroyed all three.

While the “exoterica” or public section of this website will deal primarily with the traditional literal, allegorical, tropological (moral), and anagogical (eschatological) interpretation of traditional sources-these “esoterica” pages will provide a more ontological-geopolitical interpretation of those sources. Because there is tremendous power in such an interpretation, insight into its existence has been hermetically sealed in redundant ways. Because excessive concern with political/religious correctness leads inexorably to posturing rather than thinking, these writings will be for members of Giants who have strong ties to the community, possess good judgment and prudent discretion. Giants of the Earth Heritage Center is happy to promote diversity of thinking and opinion by introducing alternative models for interpretation. At the same time, we also wish to provide our members the ability to think out loud and to express divergent views in a tolerant, accepting environment and to progress freely down whatever path their own reasoning leads them. Unlike public speech, in esoteric speech you can think without worrying that every new synthesis you entertain will be used against you in the petty king-of-the-mountainism that public speech is inclined toward.

Speak not in the hearing of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of your words. Proverbs 23:9

One Reply to “Esoterica”

This is very interesting to me. I have never heard of esoterica before, or Bjornson, I am a fan of Ibsen’s writings; although they make me very depressed. I do know the majority is often wrong and big money is running our world. Thanks for something to think about.